Survey: 68 per cent say they distrust tabloids

Share this

A new survey has found that 68 per cent of the British public say they distrust tabloid newspapers.

The highest level of trust was in TV and radio news (58 per cent) followed by broadsheets (47 per cent), online news sources such as the Huffington Post (39 per cent), mid-market titles like the Daily Mail (26 per cent) and social media (18 per cent) – the survey found.

Just 14 per cent of those surveyed said they trusted tabloid newspapers such as The Sun, Daily Mirror and Daily Star. The difference between the 68 per cent and 14 per cent figures for the tabloids – 18 per cent – said they neither trusted nor distrusted them.

The survey was carried out by StrategyOne UK Research on behalf of US-based PR and communications company Edelman, as part of its annual Trust Barometer research involving 2,101 British adults.

In a separate study it also surveyed 1,000 members of the general public in Britain aged 25-plus and 200 ‘informed’members of the public.

Among the latter category (defined as college-educated, with household income in the top quartile for their age, who read or watch business/news media at least several times a week) trust in the media had increased by 15 per cent on 2011 to 37 per cent in 2012, despite the ongoing phone-hacking scandal.

Among the 1,000 members of the public surveyed overall trust in the media stood at 32 per cent.